Missouri does not have early voting. You have to vote when everyone else does, between the hours of 6 am and 7 pm CST on Election Day\u2014unless you vote absentee, either in person or by mail. Last weekend was the first Saturday of in-person absentee voting in St. Louis County. There are four Saturdays for in-person absentee voting, in addition to weekday business hours.<\/p>\n

But, as many Missourians seem to have discovered, the rules for voting absentee contain a little loophole that many may be wiggling through. Here are the rules, as specified by the Missouri Secretary of State<\/a>. Can you spot the loophole?<\/p>\n

Registered Missourians who expect to be prevented from going to their polling place on Election Day may vote absentee beginning six weeks prior to an election.<\/p>\n

Absentee voters must provide one of the following reasons for voting absentee:<\/p>\n

Absence on Election Day from the jurisdiction of the election authority in which such voter is registered to vote;<\/p>\n

Incapacity or confinement due to illness or physical disability, including a person who is primarily responsible for the physical care of a person who is incapacitated or confined due to illness or disability<\/p>\n

Religious belief or practice;<\/p>\n

Employment as an election authority, as a member of an election authority, or by an election authority at a location other than such voter’s polling place;<\/p>\n

Incarceration, provided all qualifications for voting are retained.<\/p>\n

Certified participation in the address confidentiality program established under sections 589.660 to 589.681 because of safety concerns.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did you catch it? It\u2019s in the very first line:\u00a0 \u201cRegistered Missourians who expect<\/strong> to be prevented from going to their polling place on Election Day\u2026\u201d [My emphasis].<\/p>\n

Does that one word\u2014\u201cexpect\u201d\u2014make it okay to vote absentee, even if you\u2019re not really going to be out of town, working early or late, or in jail\u2014because you might be, or expect to be, or just find voting on Election Day to be inconvenient?<\/p>\n

Strictly speaking\u2014no. \u00a0When you show up at the Absentee Voting site, you have to check one of the boxes listing your reason for voting absentee. An election official I interviewed reminded me that, while the Secretary of State’s website uses the word “expect,” the absentee ballot application does not include that term: It just says “absence…on Election Day.” When you put your signature at the bottom of that form, you are signing an affidavit asserting that your reason is true. The election official to whom you hand that affidavit doesn\u2019t ask questions: You don\u2019t have to show an airline ticket or any other proof that you fit into the category you\u2019ve checked. But you are signing a legal document saying that you\u2019re telling the truth.<\/p>\n

But I wonder how many Missouri voters, seeing the convenience and popularity of no-excuse early voting in other states\u2014are using the word \u201cexpect\u201d to justify voting absentee.<\/p>\n

If \u201cexpect\u201d is the operative word, and voters have an expectation that they won\u2019t be able to vote on Election Day, that\u2019s not voter fraud, right? They are who they are. They live where they say they live. They bring the proper ID. They\u2019re not planning to vote more than once. [One part of the affidavit makes you promise that you\u2019re not going to try to vote more than once.] By allowing absentee voting, we are protecting all citizens\u2019 right to vote. And that\u2019s important, given the attempts at voter suppression that have become nearly epidemic in Republican-controlled state legislatures.<\/p>\n

I suspect, too, that the election authorities\u2014and the scores of temp workers staffing the check-in stations– know that this is happening.<\/p>\n

Apparently, they are not authorized to fact-check your affidavit or subject you to interrogation. So, powerless to do anything about it\u2014and perhaps even secretly wishing that Missouri would get on board with early voting already\u2014maybe they tacitly accept the reality of what\u2019s happening. I don\u2019t know. Just guessing here.<\/p>\n

But when I called the St. Louis County Election Board, an official–speaking off the record–told me this: “I don’t want to speak for the voters, but, just between you and me, there’s a lot of people who are going to be out of town on Election Day.”<\/p>\n

Another election official said, “We trust that people don’t lie on their applications.”<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure I detected a\u00a0 couple of wink-wink, nudge-nudges<\/a> in those statements.<\/p>\n

By the way, According to Ballotpedia<\/a>, as of September 2016, Missouri is one of only a handful of states with no early voting that also require voters to prov<\/a>ide an excuse for voting by absentee ballot. Twenty seven states and the District of Columbia offer no-excuse absentee voting. This map<\/a> shows the distribution of no-excuse absentee voting, excuse-required absentee voting, and early voting, state-by-state. [Click on the map for a larger view.]<\/p>\n

The election official who took my application mentioned that they are expecting 50,000 absentee votes in St. Louis County in the November 2016 election. A higher-up at the Election Board said that 30,000 to 35,000 is probably more accurate, reflecting the absentee participation in the 2012 presidential election. “In 2012,” he said, “interest in absentee voting increased as Election Day got closer, and during the last two weeks, we were getting as many as 2,000 absentee voters per day.”<\/p>\n

Are there really that many people who fit the requirements?<\/p>\n

My conclusion is that there\u2019s probably a lot of \u201cwink-wink, nudge-nudge,\u201d in the absentee voting system here in Missouri. To me, a better way would be to offer some early voting days and thereby decriminalize the loophole wriggling that everybody knows is happening.<\/p>\n

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